The title song of Cabaret is a solo version of this, slowing down (with Truck Driver's Gear Change) to begin the final strain ("Start by admitting from cradle to tomb"). The opening number, "Willkommen," is also subjected to this.

"Return to the Sea" from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch goes a little too far with this one. When it slows down, it also changes its tune enough that, until the full version came out on the CD, people thought the last part was a different song.

"Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix. Slowdown? Check. ("And so castles made of sand... slip into the sea... eventuallyyy.."). Normal end? Yeah, that too. (The slide guitar melody from the intro is repeated with added reverb)

One song in the Rhythm GameO2Jam, "Identity part II," does this, and, if you're playing it on Hard difficulty, you are then suddenly greeted by rapid scales and a charlie foxtrot of notes arranged to form a word in Korean hangul. The latter is humanly impossible to clear without missing any notes.

"Masquerade" from The Phantom of the Opera is a prime example of this. The last repetition is much slower, and louder, than the rest of the piece. However, it doesn't speed up again, but rather suddenly falls sideways into a minor key when the Phantom enters, and then gets cut off.

While a bit hard to distinguish, R.E.M.'s song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" supposedly slows down during the last chorus. Word of God says the band noticed bassist Mike Mills looked pained during recording and slowed down somewhat, and Mills was taken to the hospital afterwardsnote Both the recording and the tour for Monster were quite the Troubled Production: every band member save Peter Buck fell ill or required medical attention at least once.

Opeth's "The Drapery Falls" kind of ends like this. "Deliverance" as well (though the "rock" ending after the Last Chorus Slow-Down is rather long).

"Rather long" here means that the song extends for another four minutes after the last chorus. You know - longer than the average rock or pop song. And this four minute extension is home to some awesome riffs in a bizarre time signature.

Power Metal band Cellador has the song "No Chances Lost" ending like this.

Frequently done with the final verse of John Philip Sousa's "Stars And Stripes Forever", although Sousa probably didn't originally write it that way, seeing as how it's a military march and all.

Also frequently done with the final chorus of "The Battle of the Hymn of the Republic", usually paired up with the most stirring, heartfelt, tear-jerking moment of a patriotic speech or battle.

Parodied in some productions of The Pirates of Penzance during the number "With Catlike Tread" starting with the Joseph Papp NYC revival. Some productions take this to further extremes by performing as many as SEVERAL encores to this particular moment, each slower and louder than the one before, regardless of the inevitable fatigue.

Also from the same play, "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General" frequently gets this treatment. Then inverted to all hell if an encore is called for (which is likely). It's fairly common for a Major-General Stanley who can handle it to say to the conductor "Presto agitato, sil vous plais, Maestro" ("Very quick, if you please, Master").

In Pippin, "Glory" does this in the section when the full ensemble starts singing "The gates of heaven await" to a slow rock beat, with a big "you ain't seen nothin' yet" flourish.

Weezer does this arguably twice on their Pinkerton album, once in "Pink Triangle" and a lesser example in the interlude of "The Good Life".

Willie Nelson's version of "Blue Skies" (originally composed in 1926 by Irving Berlin) does this not once, but twice. Towards the end of the song, the chorus reappears at half tempo - that is, what notes normally would have been crotchets (quarter notes) are now minims (half notes); and then it happens again: the notes are now four times as long as they were originally, and the original crotchets are now semibreves (whole notes).

The Book of Mormon does this with "Spooky Mormon Hell Dream," slowing down from fast Heavy Metal to grandiose big-band swing, and speeding back up again after six bars.

"Beyond My Wildest Dreams" from the stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid slows down in the first phrase of the last chorus, before returning to normal tempo. "One Step Closer" and "If Only" also feature this trope.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy